#I wouldn't be surprised if I end up doing a liveblog someday.

[slowthinkingreader]

The Shadow of The Torturer - Gene Wolfe

(Started May 14th, finished May 25th, 2024)

Takes a long drag of my cigarette. OKAY. I really didn't intend to start another long series of books this year. I've already started my read of Proust. How much have I read of Lost Time? Don't ask me that right now. This book, I'm coming to know, is basically like reading Proust, except instead of following along with the minutia of high-society France in the 20th century, we're somewhere in the far distant future, where the sun has dimmed in the sky and society is contrived in such a way that the ruling powers depend on a guild of Torturers to blindly carry out the punishment they're ordered. There's also fantasy medieval towns and fantasy logic; duels, mythology, time travel, JRPG characters... I could sooner fit what doesn't appear in this book rather than what doesn't.

Full disclosure, the ^ cover art above is not the actual art of the book I own, as I would otherwise put, because I don't own the book, I'm reading this series on my phone, and the cover art that Apple Books supplies to all their books are so ugly I couldn't in good conscience put that shit here for other people to fry their eyes with. Thank me.

Another disclosure; I'm listening to the Shelved by Genre podcast as a companion as I read along. It's really good! It's what got me interested in reading these books to begin with. I'd heard of the Book of the New Sun series before, in a "this series is a classic but the books look very intimidating on the sci fi shelves" sense, but never felt compelled to read them myself until now. I listened to the first episode and realized I would have a lot more fun if I read the chapters myself and then compared my observations as I went along.

In fact, this first book was not that long of a read, but it's very, very dense with information. Not in the sense that the worldbuilding or the plot is especially strange, though it is; the prose itself is so evasive in what it's describing that several times I've had to backtrack to make sure I'm understanding what's even transpiring on the page. You're frequently introduced to foreign expressions and concepts with no explanation as to what it means, and sometimes you're introduced to things that should be familiar, but that are mystified and made foreign.

It makes for a confusing review, but I don't know if I would have enjoyed this book without the podcast as a companion. And I'm not saying that as a complaint. Maybe this speaks more about my own patience and taste, but in a way I feel like the book presents itself so much as a game rather than a singular reading experience. Things of interest are obscured from you; the narrator obscures the truth from you; your ability to parse and identify patterns reveals different things every time you read something, depending on what you seek out. Any one interpretation is bound to be different. I'm trying to imagine myself reading this book alone and finding myself very bored at the prospect. I understand why New Sun has such an involved fanbase; you could hold infinite debate over every detail in this book. I'll keep myself more limited in this review than I could be.

Severian— I love Severian. Awesome, never lies, wise beyond his years, shredded and shirtless all the time, and his sword is huge. May or may not be embellishing his own biography.

Okay I actually don't have much to say about him yet. The book is such that it doesn't exactly resolve anything. I imagine by the end of the series I will be able to formulate something much more like an "opinion" about the "contents", which will hopefully make more sense by then. Until I finish, I have a few thoughts and predictions:

I love the way this book plays with scale. I love how unabashedly *huge* everything is. Can't get enough of massive women and mountains and galactic empires and ocean monsters. Not enough of this in any genre, I say!!!

I honestly have no idea where the book is going wrt misogyny and gender. It's certainly grappling with a lot of interesting thoughts on gender roles and bioessentialism... but to what end, I really can't predict. I wonder how Severian would react to somebody challenging him? If a woman did? If Vodalus did?

What memory could Vodalus possibly be trying to get out of eating corpses. Just any corpses, too? Nobody's crypt in specific you're trying to pilfer? Why is memory something you can extract from eating corpses too I... whatever. Whatever. I'm normal. It's fine.

Maybe I'm too Lord of the Rings-brained, but when I read this, my immediate impression was that he was looking into an eye, with a sharp sclera surrounded by fire:

For the first book of the Book of the New Sun series, The Shadow of the Torturer was intriguing, and enjoyable if only to appreciate the prose, but it hasn't completely sold me yet. 6/10.